Xamarin is a company founded in 2011by the same engineers that created Mono project, a free and open source to run Microsoft .NET applications cross-platform on Android, iOS y GNU/Linux. Xamarin is a complete tool that allows you to develop cross-platform mobile apps. What makes Xamarin special is its capacity to translate your apps in C# into an executable code on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

For beginners in this world, C# is a programming language developed by Microsoft, which is very popular with mobile apps .NET developers.

The development of iOS apps uses objective-C and for developing on Android we use Java. What makes Xamarin is to combine these programming languages through IDE Xamarin Studio, this is why we need to control C# to develop apps on iOS, Android and Windows Phone and have some notions of each platform.

One of its main advantages is the reusing code. This means, when you develop an app you write a new and tested code; if this code is the same for all platforms in which you want your app, you don’t need re-write a new code but instead you can reuse it due to it is tested and not show errors, what guarantees a proper operation. Otherwise, if we find any error code and we fix it in shared code, this bug fix will be integrated across the different platforms. This solution will reduce significantly both development costs and time and also allows you to navigate across all three platforms easiest due to they share the same development environment.

It’s very important to eliminate from reused code any native element related to user interface because it will only depend on the target platform. Also you should eliminate any filesystem integration, any platform-specific frameworks and license verifications. This is the reason why we will try to extract and decouple as much functionality as possible independently. Thanks to methods such as Inversion of Control (IoC) you can increase your shared code. Xamarin recommends to create applications that are written to share up to 90% of their code.

Another advantage is that Xamarin has thirds parties’ libraries comparable to that of native code. You can use a wide array of 3rd party code that has already been created. In addition to this, you can access to bindings for nearly the entire underlying platform SDKs in iOS, Android and Windows Phone through C#.

In short, Xamarin Studio (XS) offers you all the possible tools to built an app that works across all three mobile platforms of iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. As important information, Xamarin Studio is not free but you could get access to the full Xamarin Business feature set for 30 days.

On the other hand, within Xamarin Studio we can find Xamarin.Forms a useful tool that allows you to create user interfaces that can be shared across all three platforms. These user interfaces are rendered using the native controls of the target platform, allowing applications to preserve the suitable look and feel for each platform.

Xamarin.Forms are written in C# and their apps are able to use any of the APIs and some features like CoreMotion, PassKit, and StoreKit on iOS; NFC and Google Play Services on Android; and Tiles on Windows Phone. In other words, with this tool it is possible to create mobile apps that have parts of their UI created with Xamarin.Forms and other parts created with the native UI toolkit.

Xamarin.Forms apps architecture is the same as that of traditional cross-platform apps. The most used method is to implement Portable Libraries or Shared Projects to save the shared code, and then create specific applications for each platform that will consume this shared code. The following image is an example of how the traditional Xamarin approach is and how the approach would be with Xamarin.Forms.

You can choose between two methods to create user interfaces in Xamarin.Forms. The first way consists in creating it with source code using the API provided by Xamarin.Forms and the other one is to use Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), a declarative markup language from Microsoft that describes user interfaces. The UI is identified in an XML file making use of the XAML syntax and the run time behaviour is defined in a separate code-behind file.

If you want to learn more about Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms , you can find more information in their websites.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have a cross-platform app idea, . We will help you in everything you need.

Considering this highly technology era in which we are living, it is not surprising that new mobile applications, smartphones and software updates appear every day and with this, appear new words that we are not clear yet about what they mean. One of these words may be Push Notifications, a mechanism that we use daily. In our today’s post we tell you what it is this mechanism.

Push technology is a way of communication in which a server sends a message to an endpoint device. That means, it’s a message sent to you by a server to notify that you have new information. This notification appears in the status bar of your mobile. This technology is characterized by the server is who starts this communication, although the user has not interest about this. The server always notifies the new information.

The most important in Notifications Push is its immediacy so it will always notify new messages or events even if we aren’t using the application. Although the application is turned off or open in the background, when the server receives new information, it will always let us know. In other words, Notifications Push always “wake up” our smartphone even if the user is not activately using the application.

By definition, so that the server can send the message to the user, the latter has to subscribe previously to its information channels in order to the server know where to send that message. This is, during user registration, it’s important to save the User’s Registration ID in Android and the Devide Token in iOS and store them to send Notification Push when the information is available in one of these channels.

It’s important to distinguish between Push and Pull technology. The main difference is who starts the communication. In Pull technology is started by the user, that is when we set the frequency with which we want to be notified by the server. For example, if we set the new information frequency to 5-10 minutes, this will be time that we could see if we have new notifications. The server works depending on this frequency. The Pull down to refresh is an example of Pull Technology that means to pull down an element for updating information. Here, the user is who starts this action.

How does Push Notification work?

Basically, different connections are opened from the server to Apple and Google. They are who directly communicates with smartphone (Apple by APNS and Google by GCM).

In this regard, Blackberry was the first platform that used Push technology to communicate to their users the receipt of e-mails instantly. This was a breakthrough in the field of smartphones thanks to RIM (Research in Motion) signed an agreement with telephone companies through which a permanently open connection was established with the RIM servers. From here, a lot of companies began to use this technology.

Actually, the apps that use most frequently this mechanism are native applications and also hybrid apps but developing a special native complement. Many apps developers have decided to use this technology to increase the user interaction with their app.

There are two ways to introduce this method in any project:

Developing the notification on the server, connect it with the Apple and Google servers and then, implement it in the smartphone. This development is complicated and depending on the number of Push that will be sent, they will consume information data from a server and send many requests. It’s important to know what type of Push we want to use and where it will be stored (if they are a chat or a message).

Introducing any possible existing solution such as Urban Airship: It consists in using a SDK within the mobile applications that connect with a third party responsible of sending the information to Apple and Google. These platforms usually charge per each notification sent, although its price is not expensive. Normally, use this way is faster and therefore cheaper in development. The only disadvantage is that you will depend on another platform to send the notification but the services on offer can compensate the price for each notification.

If you want to get more information about this or other questions don’t hesitate to contact us. We will help you in everything you need.

Maybe this is one of the dilemmas most common at the time of deciding to develop a mobile app. In this regard, know if you have the possibility to recover the investment is the key, that’s why it’s important to know how we can promote our app and obtain revenue. In this post, we tell you how to recover your investment in a mobile app development.

There are many ways to monetize our mobile application:

Paid applications: With this kind of apps you only have to pay for download. In despite of, it can include another monetization ways that we explain below. This type of monetization is often used by applications that only offer you just one service such as photo editor, GPS or mobile games. Moreover, this modality has a subcategory that consists of providing an incentive to the users to download the app. To do this, developers frequently offer a free trial version we can call “Fremium apps”. After that, they offer a Premium version where you have to pay to access to many more features. With this way of purchasing, Google and Apple take a percentage of the overall transaction, around 30% of the total price and then our payment will vary depending of the amount of downloads we have provided through our app. This business model is more usual for iOS applications due to Apple users are used to pay for it. An example is Cut The Rope game that, although it has a free trial version, you have to pay 2,69€ to access to Premium version.

Within this category, we can include Whatsapp because after the first year of subscription you have to pay 0,89€ for iOS and Android.

In- App Purchases: Here, you can download the app for free (although there are paid apps that include this method) but before you can access to extra features you have to pay for them. It’s possible that you get a greater profitability with this way, due to the users will spend more money on unlocking additional features compared to the money they will spend on downloading your app. The different prices will be established by the developers both in Apple Store and Google Play. As the way above, these platforms take a percentage of each purchase within the app best known as In-App Purchases or micropayments. The key is to offer the app’s full version for free to attract the users and then, once inside the application, they are prepared to pay for getting extra life, special powers, coins, unlock levels, among other options in games and getting maps of different countries paying for each of them in GPS apps. An example of app that uses this way of payment is Emotiboom, a mobile game where you have to pay to get coins or to unlock pause button.

In-App advertising: This is one of the options most common. It consists in offering the app for free and charge for the advertising that appears on it. This is the case of popular games like Angry Birds. Banner ad is the way most used; revenues will be obtained from each click made on the banners, from each installation of the app promoted on the user’s mobile and from advertising impressions. Another way is Interstitial Ad which appears on full screen and it can appear between level changes, for example, or when you open the app. This is one of the most visually impressive way because it can include images, videos or links. The only disadvantage is that interrupt the user’s experience in a shameless way compared to the Banner ad. Its advantage is that the interstitial impressions and clicks are better paid than banners. Some of the platforms to promote your app are AdMob, iAd, Inmobi, Mobfox, Kiip or Millennial Media

Moreover, as we said at the beginning, you can combine all these ways. You can find paid apps with micropayments and paid or free apps with micropayments and advertising. For example, Real Racing is a free game but it has micropayments, moreover for getting coins without micropayments it suggests you to watch ads within the app.

Finally, we could include a fourth category that consists in selling our app to third parties. This may seem difficult but it is not impossible to do. And if you have a successful app and find a person interested in buying your app? This will be a good way to monetize your application. There are examples of free applications that didn’t generate incomes but due to their popularity achieve added value. This is the example of Instagram that was bought by Facebook for $1.000 million.

As you can see, if you want to obtain incomes through your application or game to recover the cost of an app development we suggest you include micropayments and advertising in your app, as it’s difficult to monetize without any of these methods. It is very important to know what type of app you have to decide what type of purchasing you need.

If you have an app that you want to monetize, do not hesitate to contact us. We will help you in everything you need.

Since we live in this constantly evolving digital environment, we can find words every day that we don’t know in depth yet. Maybe you have heard of Augmented Reality (AR), and if not, in our today’s post you can learn more about this concept.

Augmented Reality is all we watch in our smartphone. It calls Augmented Reality because combines physical and digital information in the same place at the same time. In this way, we can get more information about the elements in our environment.

In other words, Augmented Reality seeks to widen our visual perception through images, videos or digital information with the help of mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, computers or Google Glass, for example. In conclusion, AR turns our physical world into interactive and digital world. The difference from virtual reality is that it doesn’t replace the reality, but instead overlap data information on real word in real time.

Due to Augmented Reality are based on real physical perception, it has many utilities. It’s enough to have a mobile device in order to enjoy it. Thanks to high penetration of this devices in our everyday life, we can find a lot of applications based on this technology.

So that we can talk about Augmented Reality , there is a need for five key elements.

Screen: Very important to watch the information

Camera: It will be the way to capture the reality and provide the information to the application. Neccesary to activate any AR system.

Marker: It will be the element that runs the app. It can be an image or a geographic point

Virtual information: This is what the user receives when the marker is activated through the camera or GPS

Software: It’s the mechanism that interprets the application and shows it on the screen.

All this elements have to complement each other in order to ensure Augmented Reality. Many industries have seen in this applications great future ahead. This is why they have decided to make use of the opportunities that this market offers and the smartphones are the perfect tool to enjoy Augmented Reality in real time. Hence, this technology are increasing in the last years.

What is clear is that this type of technology has not limits because we can see how the electronic devices that use this kind of reality to make our daily life easier are increasing every day, altough it may complicated to adapt to these. Google Glasses are a clear example of this. So you have an idea of how AR works, watch the video below.

If you want to develop a native app that uses this technology, do not hesitate to contact us. We will help you in everything you need.

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]]>https://www.qode.pro/blog/what-is-augmented-reality/feed/0How to know if your company needs an apphttps://www.qode.pro/blog/how-to-know-if-your-company-needs-an-app/
https://www.qode.pro/blog/how-to-know-if-your-company-needs-an-app/#commentsMon, 23 Feb 2015 11:47:38 +0000https://www.qode.pro/blog/?p=193How to know if your company needs an app?

For all is an open secret that mobile applications are the trend of the moment. Everyday we can see how the mass-media teach us cases of applications that are a resounding success. This new form of marketing has been raised the doubt in many businesses of whether they really need an app. In today’s post we will help you find out if your business needs a mobile app.

In Spain, the smartphone penetration already reaches 80% according to the IAB Mobile Marketing annual survey 2013. But that’s not all, nearly 71% of smartphone users do not leave home without it and of these, 88% accessed several times daily. Focusing on applications, we can separate these data:

Considering all these data, it is not surprising that many people want to have a presence on an ever wider market with so many future prospects.

Based on application requests we receive and end of project realization, entrepreneurs who apply and see the need to develop applications and mobile games are, in the first place, advertising agencies who are clients that have a clear idea of what they want and they know the profitability and corporate image benefits they can get if their idea is carried out correctly.

Entrepreneurs are other type of customers that if they have a business idea that revolves around a mobile application they won’t have any choice as to carry it out or leave the project aside. Today, this type of customer is very common. They see in this market a viable way to achieve profitability and large number of users.

In relation with other companies that make the decision to develop an app, according to their objectives, we can find growth companies that looking to expand their customer base through the app; companies seeking to improve their business or enhance customer loyalty; companies that want to modernize their corporate image and use the app as a work tool; or companies seeking to optimize business management systems.If you want to know how much it costs an app approximately depending on the type of app that you want, click here.

If you do not belong to any of these categories it is likely to, al least for now, you do not need an app for your business. Otherwise, if you belong to any of categories and have an app idea you can contact us, we will advise you about the project you have in mind.

Gamification can be described as the use of game elements and techniques in non-gaming contexts. This means, the use of game thinking in no recreational areas such as education, health, marketing, among others. This is done to make the activities, products, services or processes related to these sectors more attractive and funny.

Gamification analyzes what is the fact that many games are entertaining, what mechanics mobiles games are used to engage with an user and move this technique to other tasks that are more boring a priori and to turn them into attractive tasks. What this technique seeks is to increase motivation and user loyalty. It could be a powerful new strategy to influence behavior and interaction user with that particular activity.

History

You may think that this technique is new, but the fact is that it has been used for a long time. What it happens is that gamification has gained special relevance due to the large growth of the video game industry, from mobile advices to other platforms such as PCs, XBOX, Playstation.

The word ‘Gamification’ was used for the first time by Nick Pelling in 2003, but it wasn’t widely known until 2010. From that moment, many companies began to include gamification among their services. This is why gamification is most popular now.

This process uses game techniques to increase engagement and participation. Some of this techniques consist of giving rewards such as prizes, surprise gifts or customer loyalty cards, although there are many more types of rewards.

Companies that use gamification

Some apps or social networks have chosen to use this method to make user experience more motivating and entertaining. To do this, they have decided to use differents mechanics depending on their demands. For example:

Another example of rewards and prizes is Dropbox: This virtual pen-drive used gamification to reward with more storage space those who invite their friends to join on Dropbox. Who sends the invitation gets more storage space the more friends join on Dropbox. But not only they get extra storage space, also every friend who joins.

Scoring techniques: Their objective is to motivate action and increase user loyalty.

Applied to Social Media, as a website or blog, we can say that gamification is all we use to encourage readers to comment, share, vote in a survey in which they can win something, among other things. The aim is that the readers interact on our website and increase their user loyalty to ensure that they return to our page. Thus, they would also be contributing to our SEO, because the more actions they do in our website better positioned it will be in the main search engines.

As you can see after these examples, gamification has become an industry that is always present in our environment in one way or another. Since many companies have decided to use gamification because they see it as an effective way to make their business profitable.

Platforms and services

If you want to go for the use of this technique, the most popular platforms in this sector are Badgeville, BigDoor, Bunchball Nitro and Gigya that provide all the features and services of gamification.

But not only in mobile applications and websites we find gamification, it can also be used in our physical or social environment, such as converting some stairs in a piano where each step is a key. This is one of the examples that you can see below:

In recent years, we have seen how the way to surf the internet has changed radically. The time has come and gone where we have to wait to get home to catch the PC and read the latest news. Now, and with advances in technology, we have all the news within reach. The emergence of smartphones has been a real change of era but also a change in our lifestyle. Because which of us does not go on the subway or the bus to the smartphone in hand reading about everything is happening in the world? This is the main reason why many webmasters have been developing web apps for their pages as a clear need. In today’s post we will tell you what is a web app.

A web app is a website version optimized and adaptable to any mobile. In other words,it is a page that can be opened from the browser on any terminal regardless of operating system. This optimization is possible thanks to HTML5 and CSS3.

The main advantage they have is their ability to adapt to any mobile device, as mentioned above. It is enough that the device has an updated mobile browser like Chrome or Safari. Now, in truth, to display the page correctly on different platforms is necessary to include a fragment of special codes for each of them. But there is more, this type of apps does not occupy memory of your mobile phone because it is not an app that you can download from the Market Places, no need updates because you will always access the latest version of the page as any webpage; not being a native application, resource consumption of the device is minimum. Therefore, it does not affect smartphone’s performance.

Below, we show you an example of Financial Times web app, which became famous for its controversy with Apple.

One of the cons is since they are not an app as such, they lose the possibility of appearing in the market places and use them as a form of promotion and distribution; to use it requires internet connection; not being native can not take advantage of mobile resources such as geolocation, push notifications and the usability is inferior.

Using or not using web app?

It depends on the size of your project, the objectives and economic resources. From Qode, we recommend web app for projects with a low budget or companies that simply want to bring the user to their website but not for projects that require features that exploit the capabilities of mobile devices.

Commom questions about web apps

A web app has an icon launch? No, it doesn’t, because it is not a native or hybrid application.

Can I download a Web App on Android and iOS? You can see it from the browser on Android, iOS or Windows Phone, but you can’t download from Google Play, App Store or Windows Marketplace.

Can I use my smartphone features with a web app? Being an optimized mobile web that is opened from the browser does not access the phone’s capabilities.

In short, when we decide if we want a web app or a native app we need to assess the demands of our company to see if it really worth trusting in a web app.

If you want more information about this topic, please do not hesitate to contact our development team and we’ll respond as soon as we can.

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]]>https://www.qode.pro/blog/what-is-a-web-app/feed/0How much does it cost to develop an app?https://www.qode.pro/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-an-app/
https://www.qode.pro/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-an-app/#commentsTue, 20 Jan 2015 11:15:29 +0000https://www.qode.pro/blog/?p=183How much does it cost to develop an app?

Surely, this is the question many of you have ever asked yourself before planning a mobile app development project. The mobile applications market is becoming one of the most powerful and billionaires markets, it’s enough to see the funding of start-ups based in apps in USA. That is what makes this sector has attracted the interest of many entrepreneurs to get into this world. Although you can find posts related to this topic everyday, we will tell you which factors involved in the process of developing an app and how it affects the price.

To know more about how much it costs to develop a mobile app, first we are going to show you how many types of apps exist and what could be its approximate price depending on the staff of the developer company who can participate in its development and the technology used. From low to high price:

Apps based in advertising: These applications are designed to advertise a specific campaign or promotion of a fixed duration. Since they have a short period of life we don’t involve too much on their development, so we need a good designer and a generalist programmer, he does not need to be specialized. The price will be around 3,500€ to 5,500€ ($4500 – $6500) for both platforms, although it will depends on the final quality of it.

Native apps: In this case, we consider applications without back-end in which, apart from having a longer period of life, can also integrate functions like email, social networks, geolocation, among others. These applications require much more involvement of workers because they need a base and designs solid that can be expanded with a view to future. This development needs the participation of a good Android engineer (who will develop in Java), an iOS engineer (for developing in Objective-C) and a designer who has experience in this area. The degree of participation of each of them will depend on the objectives and customer needs. The price range between 5,000€ – 15,000€ ($6500 – $18000). The final price will be based on the size of the application and customer requests (if you want a simple design or architecture, for example).

Databases or management apps (such as Social network): In this type of development, the careful design and base app are very important. In these apps no resource is spared. Such applications require a total involvement of experienced professionals to avoid any error in the application development that tends to include backend engineers (for database and web services), frontend engineers (for web layout), Android engineer and iOS engineer for native apps. These apps may include content, image editing, sound, writing, etc. Approximate price: between 15,000€ – 70,000€ ($18000 – $8500)depending on the size of the app, features and UX effects. We should request this type of apps to specialists in this sector because it is difficult to find a only person who masters all the technologies required for this development.

Hibryd apps: In general, and as a estimate, we can consider that developing a hybrid app is in a price range of between 65% and 80% of the development of a native application for Android and iOS, depending on the functionalities we can develop in a hybrid way (HTML5) and which can be developed in native language specifically for each system. Generally, these apps will have an inferior quality and performance than the native apps.

Games mobile development: This is the most complicated case because games can be very expensive depending on the backend, art and technology in which it is programmed. It’s completely different develope a game with, for example, the Phaser framework and it is a 2D game than develope a 3D game with Unity3D, so that the variation in delivery time and cost of development is enormous. As a guideline, games that have been successful such as the Real Racing 3, has cost millions of euros at its base development. Our development team includes artists, designers, Unity specialists engineers and engineers Backend.

As you can see, according to how many engineers involved in the app development, the price can change. Depending on their degree of specialization and the number of hours invested in the development, the final price will be established. One of the participant in this process is a Back-End engineer who will develop the structure of the app; a graphic designer who, as you can imagine, is responsible for deciding the visual aspect and usability of the application and one or more programmers who will built content in the application. At this point, we must distinguish the platform for which we want our app, as there will be a specialist engineer in each of them (Android, iOS, Windows Phone …)

It’s difficult give you an exact price because it will depends on many different variables. The final price depends entirely on the functionality and how innovative app seeks to be. It is very important that if you want that your app has a view to the future and prospects of recovering the investment, value the experience of development team in planning, design and programming so that they develop your idea reducing to the minimum the margin of error. And, of course, they must give you guarantees.

If you are interested in developing a mobile application do not hesitate to contact us, we will advise and help you in everything you need.

The world of smartphones has developed enormously in recent years, but if something is growing even more is the development of mobile applications. Surely you know and use countless entertainment, information, communication and transportation mobile apps, among others, but perhaps you often hear a term that is not very common, native applications. What they are and why they are called Native Apps? In today’s post we explain what is really a native application.

Currently, the main operating systems – iOS, Android and Windows Phone- and their market places – App Store, Google Play and Windows Marketplace – totaling about 3 million of available applications. This “boom” has attracted the interest of many people to develop new applications that grab the consumers’ attention and achieve a niche in the digital market. At first sigh or for a good graphic design these apps may look alike, but they can be categorized according to how they were developed, which marks its benefits both in terms of response, speed and usability. Therefore, we can distinguish between native applications, those that have been developed taking into account the particularities of each platform to offer the best benefits and hybrid apps, those that leverage a common development which can then be personalized for each type of device: iPhone, Android, among others.

Native applications are so called because they are developed in the native language of the terminal. Depending on the platform for which we want our application, we will develop in a specific language for it. For example, to develop for Android we use Java, for iOS Objective C, and now the new Swift, and for Windows Phone C # and Visual Basic NET.

These applications will make use of the smartphone resources, having access to different features like camera, GPS, among others. In addition to this, they have many advantages due to be designed directly for the terminal software. This is why they will have an optimized performance and an interface more suited to the operating system the user is accustomed to use. This is the main reason why the native apps are the favorite because they offer more powerful results in design, usability and efficiency. Its distribution is done through the official market places for each operating system, which ensures full visibility and safety.

Another advantage is that these apps can be used without internet connection, although this does not mean that in any of its parts is required. Push notifications are another advantage as well as creating a shortcut on your home screen after installation.

On the other hand, its cost is usually higher because they have a more complex and different programming languages development. This requires more development time and a great preparation by the team or apps development company. This, perhaps, is one of its main disavantages, price, due to its development can not use recycled language from one operating system to another, you have to start from scratch and implement it independently for each platform. Its price also reflected the time required (more than other apps), maintenance costs and validation processes that, in some cases, can be very complicated.

One such case is the App Store, where their validation process is not automatic. It is executed by qualified Apple staff, which can lead to the approval of the app takes at least a week. In the case of Android, it is much faster because they can take approximately 2-4 hours to be available. However, this process is still tedious because it has to be carried out every time an update is made.

In despite of, to develope a native application has more advantages than disadvantages. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are many native applications in the markets places that allow us to make more use of our mobile since they are precisely the apps that have succeeded in the markets of applications.

Embark on the adventure of developing an application is not easy. To make this decision is very important to pay attetion to many elements. One of the most important is knowing for what platforms apps we want our mobile app, because according to this we will find different characteristics from one platform to another. This will impact on the customizations that have to be made for each operating system and, consequently, on the price of the app development.

Before you decide where you want your application is, we suggest you to do a study of the leading platforms for seeing in which you can get the best results. Before wanting to be on all platforms without need, it is recommended to choose those that best meet our demands. Then, and depending on the results, we can extend our mobile app and its resources to other platforms.

Currently, the most powerful platforms are Android and iOS, according to data collected in the report Q3 global market, and following by Windows Phone and Blackberry. Not surprisingly because of this, Google Play and Apple Store are the most active market places today, among other things, because between this two market places there are 2.5 million of mobile apps available. Behind of them are Windows Phone Store and Amazon Appstore, the latter overcoming Blackberry World that only has 130,000 applications.

Considering all these data, is much more clear what platforms we will develop in the first part. Android and iOS are those that have greater presence in the world of apps so it is logical to start developing your app for these two powerful platforms and then, depending on the results, extend it to others.

Once selected platforms, the next step is decide what type of application we want in order to reach the maximum number of clients. Here it is very important that the developer of apps that you hire advise you of the best way for your platform application do not assume an exaggerated investment. Here we explain the types of applications available:

Native Apps

Smartphones consumers are the most demanding in the technology sector. We always want to have in our hands the best mobile with the best resources. That is why the native apps are a safe bet because they offer higher performance and better design adapted to the operating system on which the app is installed.

Perhaps this is one of the main reasons why developing a native app is more worthwhile. Although we assume a higher cost, we make sure to have an app of high quality because it will be developed in the native language of the device, offering greater usability and user experience, making use of the full capabilities of smartphone and offer the user experience expected of it.

Developing native apps is independent for each platform. This is why develop for the 3 major platforms (Android, iOS, Windows) requires developing in Java, Objective-C and C#. Usually an engineer will not be a specialist in all 3 languages and even less on the specifics of each platform. This mean that develop a muli-platform app in the native language will require as many engineers as operating systems we want.

While the cost is high, there will be companies can not affort this payment. This is the reason why exist other more economic possibilities, such as hybrid app or web apps, which may serve depending on the demands that the mobile app has.

Web Apps

Unlike native apps, and as we explained in the post of Web App, this type of apps is developed in CSS, HTML and Javascript, not in the native language of the device as the apps mentioned above. This makes that these applications are adaptable to any device regardless of operating system they use because it works through the mobile browser. Its development is cheaper but its only fault is that it doesn’t work without internet connection. They are optimized websites for mobile devices that are opened through the browser.

Hybrid Apps

They are called hybrid because mixed properties of native applications and web apps. These applications are cheaper than the native app, but it is also true that they have many limitations unable to feed on all device resources. Although the last existing frameworks allow more functionality, it is necessary to be programmed in native language for each platform to some of them.

A hybrid application is programmed in HTML5, CSS and Javascript wrapped in a native application layer. As noted above, it is common use frameworks for these developments. The most widely used framework for developing such applications is PhoneGap. This framework uses a native wrap layer and provides access to increasingly native functionality, although, for example, employ push notifications would require a native development for each platform within the hybrid implementation. Hence its name, it mixes native development with web development.

An example of a native app with some hybrid part is Instagram, which uses native language to take and upload the photo and navigate and web resources to show our profile and photos uploaded by other users.

On the other hand, within this type of apps you can find a subcategory might be called interpreted applications. For this kind of apps the framework most used is AppAcelerator. But … what is it?

This framework enables you to develop a multi-platform app in JavaScript language but transforming and compiling into native code at the end.

There are also frameworks like Xamarin that generates native code sharing in C# and translates for Android and iOS, but always requires customization of interfaces to other languages (there is a variant called Xamarin Forms that takes 6 months on the market and we will dedicated its own post shortly).

The interesting thing about these applications is that they reduce costs and partly also can take advantage of specific features of native applications.

And now, after this analysis, it’s time to choose one type of app considering the target of our app, what it will be its use and the available budget.

If you have any questions or want to advise on the development of an application you can contact us.

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]]>https://www.qode.pro/blog/multi-platform-apps-development/feed/0Emotiboom, the game that gives you prizes if you winhttps://www.qode.pro/blog/emotiboom-the-game-that-gives-you-prizes-if-you-win/
https://www.qode.pro/blog/emotiboom-the-game-that-gives-you-prizes-if-you-win/#commentsMon, 12 Jan 2015 12:53:05 +0000https://www.qode.pro/blog/?p=163Emotiboom, the game where you can win prizes if you win

Everybody loves playing games on their mobile phones. It’s one of the best ways to spend our free time. There are hundreds of games that we can get for absolutely nothing. That’s why we present you with EmotiBoom, a new fantastic and fun game that we have developed at Qode and you can find at the Google Play Store and Apple Store for free.

EmotiBoom is simple. Everything revolves around Emoji symbols. So, you have to connect the first symbol that appears at the upper left of the screen with the symbol at the lower left. The symbols at the lower left are agrupated in one only symbol that you can change clicking until you find the same symbol that appears at the upper left of the screen. You have to do this as fast as possible because if the symbol touches the devil that appears on the right side of the screen the game is over. Take a look the following picture below to understand EmotiBoom better.

Once the two emoji symbols are connected, you have to press the ‘boom’ button at the lower right to make them disappear. In the beginning of the game, the devil symbol appears at the upper right of the screen but as you destroy emoji symbols the devil moves downwards. This way, your scope of action will be increased until the devil is at the bottom of the screen. As the game progresses, the symbols appear on the screen faster and faster so you will need to be quick with your fingers to score as many points as you can.

This app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play Store for free. If you want, you can directly download EmotiBoom here with your QR code scanner.

QR iOS

QR Android

But that isn’t all, EmotiBoom also have a monthly ranking where you can win big prizes if you are ranked number 1, 2 and 3. Moreover, from 4 to 10 position could also win prizes. Download Emotiboom if you want to discover which are those prizes. There will be also a countdown every month to the end of the month. At the end of the month, the score will start from zero again.

Everybody who wants to participate in the monthly ranking will have to pay with coins. You can get coins by sending a request to your friends on Facebook to play EmotiBoom. Another way to get coins is to buy them through in-App purchases, which also removes ads and enables the ‘pause’ button.

On the other hand, it’s necessary to sign up to participate in the ranking so that you can be notified by email if you’re the winner.

It’s easy to play EmotiBoom for two minutes, and even easier to play for two hours, so we suggest you download it.